Recreational Therapy

Recreational therapy helps you improve how you function in everyday life after addiction or pain treatment. As part of this therapy, you engage in fun activities that reduce the stress of treatment. However, therapists set goals for these activities. They should help you heal and grow mentally, socially, emotionally and physically.

What Is Recreational Therapy?

Because recreational therapy involves having fun, it may not sound therapeutic at first glance. However, this type of therapy actually provides many benefits. When you struggle with addiction for a long time, you forget how to have healthy fun. You also forget the importance of socialization.

Recreation as therapy helps you remember what it feels like to enjoy fun activities without using substances. You help retrain your brain, getting back to the simple pleasures of human interaction and relaxing pursuits. For too long you did not feel pleasure without your substance of choice in your body.

In addiction treatment, you engage in recreational activities at least once a week. Some rehabs use recreation periods several days per week. These activities include arts and crafts, yoga, physical fitness, sports, dance, and community outings. Many rehabs today call this therapy “experiential,” meaning you use personal experience to learn and grow.

Goals for Recreational Therapy

Driftwood Recovery in Driftwood, Texas provides experiential therapy that includes many recreational activities. These therapies help individuals like you overcome months or even years of hiding from feelings, socialization, and relationships. This therapy helps tear down the fortress of walls you built around you as part of your substance abuse isolation.

In your recreational therapies in rehab, you often participate in group sports or activities. These activities lower your stress. This helps reduce your symptoms of anxiety or depression. The therapy also levels out your brain neurotransmitters, the pleasure chemicals your substance abuse affected.

Your recreation therapist designs activities that help you physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, and spiritually. Recreation therapy is both holistic and experiential, as it helps heal all aspects of your being while you engage in group activities.

Your recreation therapy goals may include mood improvement, anxiety reduction, improved strength, and better motor skills. They might also include greater independence, healthier sense of well-being, and a better quality of life. You also improve your time management and work-life balance skills.

Enjoying Recreation Therapy for a Better Life in Recovery

In addiction treatment at Driftwood Recovery, you gain many therapies to help you overcome your addiction and live a better life. Recreation helps your brain improve its reward system pathways long harmed by substance abuse. You work with trained counselors who help you understand your needs and behaviors.

Along with your recreation therapy, you participate in other types of evidence-based therapies, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). You also undergo trauma therapy, as well as family, group, and individual therapies. Among all of your therapies, recreational therapy is the most fun.

The key to successful recreation therapy is letting your guard down. People suffering in addiction build up walls around them, always working hard to cover their behaviors and hide their substance abuse from others. These walls also block your interaction with others and stop you from building successful, happy relationships. In essence, you forgot how to enjoy healthy, fun activities with people around you.

In recreational therapy, you may struggle at first to fully participate. This closed-off self-protection is typical for people in active addiction. But soon, your walls break down, and you start seeing real change in yourself. That is how recreation therapy works.

No single recreational activity or therapy suits every person. This is why you go through so many types of therapy in rehab. One or more of these therapies will trigger a real change in your heart, mind, and spirit. You feel better and start benefiting in concrete ways toward overall life improvement.

Recreation Therapy and Other Therapies You Need in Driftwood, Texas

Driftwood Recovery in Driftwood, TX includes a wide range of therapies for your addiction recovery needs. These therapies include recreational programs like yoga therapy, sports, outdoor enjoyment, and physical fitness. Programs at Driftwood Recovery also include: